Upside-Down Face Emoji
by Sophie The Shipper
Summary: "I've known Jake forever. Our friendship is little boy holding little girl's hand." [One-Shot]


**Word Count**: _815_  
**Summary**: _"I've known Jake forever. Our friendship is little boy holding little girl's hand." ~ Gina Linetti, Season 1 Episode 22  
_**Disclaimer**: _I don't own Brooklyn Nine-Nine or the characters._

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He has been in my life since I can remember. Since that first day of kindergarten where that small kid with scruffy hair appeared and made me company while I painted. He made my confidence grow to a point where he shouldn't have allowed, but no matter what he was there to make me understand I crossed the limit. A simple shake of a head and I knew I was in the wrong. But I still kept going, because Gina Linetti doesn't like to admit she might be wrong.

He was a part of every precious memory of my childhood. Whether we were shopping at the mall, hanging out by the pool, or taking trips to the beach, we were always together, and never bored. How can anyone be bored when Jake Peralta is there to sheer your days and paint your nails? No matter how much he hated shopping, I was always able to drag him to every store I wanted, and then I would take him to an ice-cream place. I remember all those days of him painting my nails and messing everything so badly that I got to do his nails. Oh, those purple nails will forever be on my favorite childhood memories.

He was there through the good and the bad. He held my hand when my dad died, and he was there through my weirdest phases – and I was there through his.

We weren't just friends. We were family. Always were, always will be. We knew each other's cousins that only appeared on special occasions and were always at each other's houses – so much that we sometimes called the others mom of mom as well.

I knew his family jokes, he knew mine. He was that friend that I could be in silence with – which was, with Jacob, very hard to happen – and was comfortable. If I just needed his presence, he would be there. If I couldn't sleep, I could call him and be on the phone until sleep found me. If I was hungry and alone, I could appear at his door with pizza that he would open the door for me.

Our little-boy-holding-little-girl's-hand friendship wasn't always perfect. We would fight, yell, sometimes even bite – until a certain age, which wasn't as young as it should've been. But he was one of the few people that has seen me cry, that has seen me laugh so much that water came out of my mouth and nose.

Being an only child made me very close to my mom. Same happened to him. Somehow, he was my sibling, my cousin, my partner in crime, my hell on earth. Always with an evil plan on his mind, head in the clouds, but a down-to-earth kind of guy. I never took him for granted, and I hope he never does too.

Luckily for me – unluckily for him – my folder on embarrassing photos/secrets of his is the biggest one I have because we grew up together. But I can never use that folder against him – not because I'm a nice person (laughing emoji) or because he's my oldest friend – because he has too many old photos of me that he can use as payback.

No matter how much I have a love/hate relationship with his weird personality that makes me roll my eyes, stick my tongue out and laugh too much since the age of four, I love that little Sherlock Holmes a lot. I'll forever be his Watson if he lets me.

And maybe that's why it was so hard to see him go. He was going to miss one of the most important days of my life: the first day of my daughter's life.

Luckily for me, he was a part of the name choosing. Twelve-year-old Gina Linetti and (at the time) eleven-year-old Jake Peralta made a list of the most ridiculous names to give a child, and that was the list the first to have a child HAD to use. For years I saw him with Amy and thought I was in the clear. But then I got pregnant, and I just knew I lost. I was hoping for a Peralta Junior before a Linetti one.

So I had to pick from that weird list the most amazing name. Volcano, Tibia, JerHonor, Concretius, Enigma... Yep, Enigma it was. It was fitting. Also, a name that Jake chose.

Hopefully, it won't take fifteen years for them to meet. I want my daughter to meet the amazing Detective Peralta in ways that aren't through the pictures and videos I will show her. But until the day he holds the baby he helped name, I will continue to remember him as the person he was and made me be.

And I'll continue to play games on my phone, hoping he's as good as I am at making comebacks – which is impossible!

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**The End**

Please don't ask me why Gina is thinking about this, or writing this, or whatever. I don't know how to answer. I wanted to write something about Jake and Gina's friendship and came up with this. I keep thinking about Gina's last episode (S06E15), where it's canon that Gina "forgot" her friends. I don't like that. I believe that no matter how much success Gina has, she would never forget the 99, the friends she made there and, maybe more importantly, her CHILDHOOD (BEST) FRIEND WHO GOT HER A JOB AT THE 99 IN THE FIRST PLACE! Sorry, but I really didn't like the part of that episode where we find out about that. I was mad. I still kind of am.

But I hope you like this story.


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